Heart diseases have recently increased in number year by year, and have been the second highest in mortality rate among the Japanese. In many cases of the heart diseases, coronary artery stenoses occur. Stenosis treatment includes surgical operations and interventions. Accidents associated with interventions tend to occur at the stage where a device such as a catheter or guide wire is inserted through a stenotic portion. A doctor is required to comprehend the detailed shape of a stenotic portion during intervention. However, the doctor can only see a contrast-enhanced radiograph during treatment, and there is no means for knowing the detailed structure of the stenotic portion.
There has recently been developed a technique of reconstructing a three-dimensional image based on a plurality of two-dimensional images acquired by rotational imaging.
A coronary artery moves very fast in synchronism with the heart. It is therefore difficult to correct the motion of the coronary artery. The reproducibility of the motion of the heart is low. The position of the heart in a given diastolic phase slightly differs from that in the next diastolic phase. An X-ray computed tomography apparatus acquires data by rotation at a high speed of, for example, 0.4 sec, and hence suffers from only few motion artifacts due to changes in the position of the heart. However, an X-ray diagnosis apparatus cannot rotate at high speed, and hence suffers from relatively many motion artifacts.
Under the circumstances, much attention has been paid to three-dimensional imaging of a coronary artery and stent in the coronary artery. Methods of obtaining such images during intervention include a method of reconstructing images upon two-dimensional motion correction and a method of reconstructing images based on data acquired by executing rotational imaging a plurality of number of times under ECG gated scanning.
In some cases, blood vessel overlapping, shortening, and the like make it difficult to perform two-dimensional motion correction. On the other hand, since ECG gated scanning is performed by executing rotational imaging a plurality of number of times, it takes much time to perform imaging, and increases the amount of contrast medium.
The related art is described in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2005-288164.